A few years into her retirement, it became abundantly
clear to the Old Lady that her Social Security Retirement check of
$800 a month would support a very frugal lifestyle, but it would not
extend sufficiently to cover extraordinary expenses or expensive
repairs. At the age of 80, heart disease had reduced her days to
resting in a recliner, and her nights to sleeping in the same chair.
A long plastic tube emerging from an oxygenator, pumped oxygen into
her system to assist her breathing. She was, in effect, a disabled
shut-in. It was not clear, under these circumstances, how she could
devise a plan to supplement her income.

The Old Lady pondered this problem for several months.
When no solutions came to mind, the stress of unpaid bills frequently
interrupted her sleep, driving her blood pressure dangerously high.
Finally, in the middle of one very long night, she awoke abruptly and
the answer, so awesome in its simplicity, had been right in front of
her the entire time. She needed a job to make money, so she would
MAKE MONEY!

She began on the net, reading what the Computer Geeks
had to say about printers. The new wireless ones eliminated lots of
cords and wires. Inkjet printers were thought to be superior to
laser printers in copying colors. If the printer had scanning
capacity, it would copy pictures or other printed material placed on
the machine without a connection or command from any other electronic
device.

Some printers were more than $200. However, the Old
Lady was neither an artist nor did she have any intention or desire
to distribute her product to a wide area. She settled on a
copier-printer that seemed to work well for $49. This machine had an
automatic dual print feature which would allow her to print on both
sides of the paper. It would do the job.

She believed that the paper she needed would be the
biggest hurdle. Cellulose based paper of 20 pt. weight was the most
available, office supply stores competing to sell reams of it at the
lowest price. The Treasury Department produced currency that was
washable, durable and resisted tearing, eliminating cellulose
completely. The Old Lady needed paper of a weight close to 20 pt.
but made from 75% cotton and 25% linen. After much searching on
primarily oriental based sites overseas, she was shocked to discover
24 pt. paper of this exact composition at Walmart, sold in quantities
of 100 sheets.

The plan was for her caretaker to withdraw
$200 cash from her Social Security check deposits each month in
twenty dollar bills. The Old Lady would place them for copying in
the corners of a paper sheet. Each bill would be copied four times
on both sides. With an additional $800, she would double her money.

She was aware that this endeavor carried with it some
possibly drastic consequences, including a knock at the door to find
Secret Service Agents on her porch with handcuffs and a speedy trip
to Federal prison. She would be fed, clothed, and kept warm at this
type of facility. Not much different from spending her “golden
years” in a nursing home, she thought. The tradeoff having
been considered, she decided to take the risk.

There were lesser problems as well. The Old Lady was
neither educated nor skilled in the use of electronics. She could
not ask for help nor tell anyone about her plan. It would take much
practice to develop a product good enough to pass the quick scrutiny
of a store clerk. If the bills looked good, they would probably not
be held up to the light to spot holographs, water marks, or security
threads used by the U.S. Treasury to determine frauds. She must
never be greedy, confining her efforts to $20 bills distributed in
small quantities. Bills of denominations lower than $50 showing up
in a small town were unlikely to lure Treasury Agents from their
comfortable offices more than 200 miles away.

At first, the Old Lady struggled to make it work. She
encountered paper jams, internet disconnections, empty ink
cartridges, and strange error messages which she never understood on
the face of the printer screen. The first bills had borders that
were too bright, backs which did not line up with the fronts, or
printing on the back which was upside down. They were not green
enough or too green, not black enough or too black, too faded, too
bright. Her frustrations continued to mount from a combination of
electronic ignorance and the worry of being discovered.

After three days, her latest endeavors sat on a table
next to the originals. At first glance, they appeared to be perfect
duplicates. They would likely pass, absent any measures to determine
fraudulent bills.

Now she trimmed the copies with a pair of scissors,
careful to paper clip them to the original from the bank. In that
manner, no more than four bills with the same serial number would be
distributed. If more than $20 was going out at the same time, she
made sure the duplicates did not have the same number. To give all
of the new bills a more used appearance, she simply sat on them.

So it was, the Old Lady's life became more comfortable.
The computer she had used to research printers, currency paper, and
ways to spot counterfeit money was torn down, disposed of, and
replaced by a different pc. All paper scraps leftover from practice
copies and from around new bills were cut into very small pieces,
bagged, and used in the fire pit owned by her daughter's family to
roast hot dogs and other foods.

Eventually, she did not need all of her supplemental
income every month. Her hidden purse grew fat.

The new currency aged well, taking on the appearance of
bills which had been in circulation for some period of time.

No busy store clerk ever held one of the bills to the
light at the time it was passed.

Secret Service Agents never came to call.

Epilogue: Ten years after taking her new job, the Old
Lady retired unexpectedly. She simply did not wake up one morning,
and the money machine fell silent.

Her adult daughter found the purse. She was at first
shocked to see that her mom had squirreled away so much money. Her
dismay increased when, upon further examination, she discovered that
some of the bills shared a common serial number. She could not
understand how her mother, who had led a law abiding life and who
spent years as a shut-in, had managed to get mixed up with
counterfeiters.

Every week, for many months, she donated one bill to a
gas station, changing suppliers in town on a rotational basis to
avoid detection. She awarded another “Gram-Bill” or two
to Walmart for groceries. The “money” was never wasted,
nor was it ever discovered as counterfeit by store clerks, local
banks, or the U.S. Treasury.